The Trump administration is preparing to fly roughly 20 Iranian asylum-seekers and other migrants to the Central African Republic under a newly established third-country removal agreement, a deal that could eventually route hundreds of deportees to the landlocked African nation, Fox News Digital reported. The first flight could depart as early as Thursday.
The arrangement marks the latest expansion of the administration's strategy for removing migrants who cannot legally be returned to their home countries. Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan, three nations represented on the manifest, either refuse to accept deportees or present legal barriers to forced return. The Central African Republic deal offers a workaround: send them to a willing third country instead.
Reuters reported the flight also includes people from Syria and Afghanistan, along with a Turkish national. Once on the ground, deportees are expected to be housed in apartments in Bangui, the Central African capital. They will not face immediate repatriation, and the International Organization for Migration said it will provide strictly voluntary, post-arrival humanitarian assistance at the explicit request of the Central African government, while remaining uninvolved in the actual removals.
Reuters reported the agreement was finalized during a U.S. delegation visit to Bangui in May. The specific officials who traveled there have not been publicly identified, and the written terms of the arrangement remain undisclosed. The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Federal authorities have already struck a similar removal deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and at least eight African nations have taken in U.S. deportees. The Central African Republic deal extends the administration's reach into a region where diplomatic leverage, and the promise of Western partnership, carries weight.
That leverage appears to run both ways. President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, re-elected to a third term in December's election, has relied on Russia for security assistance but has also shown interest in partnering with Western countries to develop the nation's critical minerals sector. The deportation agreement may fit neatly into that broader courtship.
The administration's expanding use of third-country agreements reflects the sharper deportation push that officials like Tom Homan have pledged since the start of the term. Homan, the administration's border czar, has argued that stepping up deportation of illegal immigrants is a core promise to President Donald Trump's voters.
Among those scheduled for the flight are two Iranian women whose case highlights the legal friction surrounding the plan. Attorney Emily Trostle told Fox News Digital that both women were detained after arriving in the United States in November 2024. They filed asylum applications and received protection in the form of a stay of deportation from an immigration judge, a legal designation known as "withholding of removal."
Trostle said one of the women is a baptized convert and the other a democracy activist, both of whom she described as facing risk if returned to Iran. Their names have not been made public, and the specific court or immigration docket that issued the protection has not been identified.
The legal question is pointed: does a third-country removal to the Central African Republic satisfy or circumvent the immigration judge's stay? The women are not being sent back to Iran. They are being sent to a country they have no connection to, one that has experienced six coups since gaining independence from France in 1960 and where, by multiple accounts, armed insurgencies continue to fuel violence and risk of mass atrocities against civilians.
That distinction matters. The administration's position, implicit in the structure of the deal, is that third-country removal is not the same as deportation to a country of origin, and therefore does not violate protections that bar return to a specific dangerous homeland. Critics will argue the destination itself is dangerous enough to raise the same concerns.
The Central African Republic is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan and South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo to the south, and Cameroon to the west. It is one of the poorest and most unstable nations on earth. Decades of political instability, weak state authority, and armed insurgencies have defined its post-independence history.
Touadéra's government has leaned heavily on Russian security assistance, a relationship that has drawn scrutiny from Western governments. Yet the deportation deal suggests the administration sees enough stability, or enough willingness, to make the arrangement viable. Whether Bangui apartments constitute adequate resettlement for people who crossed the globe seeking asylum in the United States is a question the administration has not publicly addressed.
Meanwhile, congressional battles over funding the very agencies carrying out these operations continue to rage. Senate Republicans have moved to fund ICE through budget reconciliation as DHS warned of looming payroll deadlines, a fight that underscores how contested every dollar behind enforcement remains.
The International Organization for Migration's involvement adds another layer. IOM confirmed it will assist deportees on a voluntary basis after arrival, but stressed it plays no role in the removals themselves. The organization received $85 million in U.S. funding this year, a figure that raises obvious questions about how cleanly the line between "uninvolved" and "funded by the same government" can be drawn.
The arrangement is designed to give the administration a release valve for migrants from countries that refuse cooperation. Iran has long been among the most difficult nations for deportation logistics. Syria and Afghanistan present their own complications. Third-country deals bypass all of it, if the receiving nation agrees and the legal challenges don't stick.
The political dynamics around deportation have only intensified. Some Democratic officials have actively intervened to block removals. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz recently pardoned an illegal immigrant convicted of armed robbery to block ICE deportation to Laos, a move that drew sharp conservative criticism. On the other end, progressive members of Congress have demanded reparations for illegal immigrants targeted by enforcement.
Homan has been blunt about the administration's direction. In a recent appearance, he said he expects deportation numbers to increase and border crossings to decrease. That message has been consistent across multiple fronts, including his public pushback against Democrats he accuses of obstructing DHS operations.
Significant details about the Central African Republic arrangement remain unclear. The written terms of the agreement have not been released. The U.S. departure location for the planned flight has not been disclosed. The financial or logistical support the United States may be providing to the Central African Republic in exchange for accepting deportees is unknown.
It is also unclear how the administration plans to handle the legal protections already granted to migrants like the two Iranian women. An immigration judge issued a stay. The administration appears ready to move forward anyway, routing the women not to Iran but to a country where political violence is endemic and state authority is fragile.
Hundreds more could follow. The deal is not a one-flight arrangement. If the first transfer proceeds without major legal obstruction, the Central African Republic could become a regular destination for migrants the U.S. cannot or will not return to their home countries.
The administration is betting that the American public cares more about enforcement than about where deportees land. Given the state of the border debate, that bet may be a safe one. But the legal and diplomatic questions trailing this deal are not going away, and neither are the lawyers filing motions on behalf of people who thought an immigration judge's word still meant something.
When a government promises to enforce its laws, people expect follow-through. The harder question is whether the method matches the principle, or just the politics.
